For a superhero that can create anything he can imagine with his mind, the Green Lantern's creative team failed to create good characters, villains, special effects, or an overall enjoyable experience worth 11 dollars.
The movie starts off well enough with exciting action in space, where we meet a villain capable of absorbing entire planets (which comes across as a space version of the kraken used in Pirates of the Caribbean 2- not a good thing). Upon being injured, the greatest of all the Lanterns crash lands on Earth to begin the search for his successor. After searching what seems to be 4 square miles, the ring chooses the cocky and brash Hal Jordan. He's sucked up in a manner similar to the game Super Monkey Ball, and finds himself on the other side of town, and there before him is a spaceship. After an interaction of less than 30 seconds, the alien Abin Sur dies, leaving Hal wondering what to do next, and unfortunately much of the fun dies after this point.
After a bar brawl, Hal is whisked away to the beautiful planet Oa. For how much detail, design and money they put into this planet that holds all of the Lanterns, they spend all of 16 minutes on it. And of those 16 minutes, 10 is spent talking to knock-off Yodas about pointless stories and how they don't feel fear.
In a segment that feels very much like a video game intro to a game where they ask "is it OK the way you look up and down?" he learns to fly by simply falling off a ledge and just knowing how to, and why wouldn't he know how to fly? Considering he's had these powers all his life except he hasn't.
At this moment the film feels like it's finally going to pick up, but it doesn't. He learns to "imagine" by getting the crap kicked out of him by a Lantern voiced by Michael Clark Duncan. After all of two minutes he has mastered the art of creating indestructible things with his mind. And after all of this build up he quits and goes back to earth after his feelings are hurt. I wish I was kidding.
Here, a character enters the movie for no reason whatsoever. A scientist named Hector Hamond- or what you will eventually know him as: that guy who shrieks and screams every time he so much as stubs his toe- is charged with examining Abin Sur's dead alien body by a secret government organization. After examining the alien body he begins to change into a "mad scientist". All the large head make up and special effects in the world couldn't make him either scary or believable as a villain. After this point every time someone so much as forgets the ranch he ordered with his fries he makes bad things happen to people. They even go as far as giving him the disappointed-in-his-son father-figure. Even though his dad got him the job to examine the alien and a promotion, he still hates him.
Enter Hals love interest, or what I like to call her, "attractive girl who stands around and looks pretty." Clearly taking acting notes from Natalie Portman's character in Thor, she is there and looks nice but doesn't really do anything important to the plot or to the movie itself. She and Hal have one good scene of chemistry, but other than that it's just scene after scene of her in tighter and tighter dresses.
Hals "best friend character" does nothing more than pick him up one time and then say "cool" when Hal shows him the Lantern suit. That's literally all he does. There isn't that helping the hero out as best he can in the end, or anything else to add. All of these distractions and pointless characters begin to add up in an origin story of a superhero with a running time of an hour and forty five minutes.
The music I found myself feeling that much of the music could easily have been lifted from any episode of 7th Heaven at times. During the action there wasn't any swell of excitement that music should add to a film. In fact it goes unnoticed for much of the movie, never creating a Green Lantern theme; no anthem for the DC hero. Just the most stock music you will hear this summer. The one bright spot in this otherwise dim movie was the character Sinestro played by actor Mark Strong. His scenes were the more enjoyable to watch, and yet in the end his character stays in the wings for the entire movie.
Bottom line The Green Lantern is a movie that starts off promising, but ends leaving the viewer with very little interest in a sequel, or in the hero in general. With poor characters, video game-like special effects, and a very anti-climactic finale, the Green Lantern offers very little compared to the already great movies released this summer. Throughout the movie the Lanterns stress the fact that they do not feel fear, but unless this movie has a monster opening weekend, the execs that green-lit this 300 million dollar movie might just be fearing for their jobs.
The movie starts off well enough with exciting action in space, where we meet a villain capable of absorbing entire planets (which comes across as a space version of the kraken used in Pirates of the Caribbean 2- not a good thing). Upon being injured, the greatest of all the Lanterns crash lands on Earth to begin the search for his successor. After searching what seems to be 4 square miles, the ring chooses the cocky and brash Hal Jordan. He's sucked up in a manner similar to the game Super Monkey Ball, and finds himself on the other side of town, and there before him is a spaceship. After an interaction of less than 30 seconds, the alien Abin Sur dies, leaving Hal wondering what to do next, and unfortunately much of the fun dies after this point.
After a bar brawl, Hal is whisked away to the beautiful planet Oa. For how much detail, design and money they put into this planet that holds all of the Lanterns, they spend all of 16 minutes on it. And of those 16 minutes, 10 is spent talking to knock-off Yodas about pointless stories and how they don't feel fear.
In a segment that feels very much like a video game intro to a game where they ask "is it OK the way you look up and down?" he learns to fly by simply falling off a ledge and just knowing how to, and why wouldn't he know how to fly? Considering he's had these powers all his life except he hasn't.
At this moment the film feels like it's finally going to pick up, but it doesn't. He learns to "imagine" by getting the crap kicked out of him by a Lantern voiced by Michael Clark Duncan. After all of two minutes he has mastered the art of creating indestructible things with his mind. And after all of this build up he quits and goes back to earth after his feelings are hurt. I wish I was kidding.
Here, a character enters the movie for no reason whatsoever. A scientist named Hector Hamond- or what you will eventually know him as: that guy who shrieks and screams every time he so much as stubs his toe- is charged with examining Abin Sur's dead alien body by a secret government organization. After examining the alien body he begins to change into a "mad scientist". All the large head make up and special effects in the world couldn't make him either scary or believable as a villain. After this point every time someone so much as forgets the ranch he ordered with his fries he makes bad things happen to people. They even go as far as giving him the disappointed-in-his-son father-figure. Even though his dad got him the job to examine the alien and a promotion, he still hates him.
Enter Hals love interest, or what I like to call her, "attractive girl who stands around and looks pretty." Clearly taking acting notes from Natalie Portman's character in Thor, she is there and looks nice but doesn't really do anything important to the plot or to the movie itself. She and Hal have one good scene of chemistry, but other than that it's just scene after scene of her in tighter and tighter dresses.
Hals "best friend character" does nothing more than pick him up one time and then say "cool" when Hal shows him the Lantern suit. That's literally all he does. There isn't that helping the hero out as best he can in the end, or anything else to add. All of these distractions and pointless characters begin to add up in an origin story of a superhero with a running time of an hour and forty five minutes.
The music I found myself feeling that much of the music could easily have been lifted from any episode of 7th Heaven at times. During the action there wasn't any swell of excitement that music should add to a film. In fact it goes unnoticed for much of the movie, never creating a Green Lantern theme; no anthem for the DC hero. Just the most stock music you will hear this summer. The one bright spot in this otherwise dim movie was the character Sinestro played by actor Mark Strong. His scenes were the more enjoyable to watch, and yet in the end his character stays in the wings for the entire movie.
Bottom line The Green Lantern is a movie that starts off promising, but ends leaving the viewer with very little interest in a sequel, or in the hero in general. With poor characters, video game-like special effects, and a very anti-climactic finale, the Green Lantern offers very little compared to the already great movies released this summer. Throughout the movie the Lanterns stress the fact that they do not feel fear, but unless this movie has a monster opening weekend, the execs that green-lit this 300 million dollar movie might just be fearing for their jobs.